Doctor John Watson scrunched his forehead and ducked into a surgeon's entrance at St Bart's hospital. He had grown accustomed to tracking back and forth across London multiple times in a day while on a case, and yet he'd never quite gotten used to the unsettling instances when Sherlock Holmes would simply disappear. For hours at a time, Sherlock would stop responding to texts and calls only to show up again, unannounced. This, sighed John, was one of those times. Since John had been in the neighborhood, he figured that St. Bart's was as good a place as any to search for his vanished partner in crime solving. He trudged the halls, making his way down toward the morgue and its accompanying labs.
John found the door he was looking for, through the morgue and tucked into a discreet corner. The office of Molly Hooper, pathologist.
"Molly, I-" he began to speak as he poked his head into the open door.
But there was no one there.
"Odd," he thought to himself. "Molly's not here, and she's usually so particular about locking up when she's away."
John shrugged and turned to leave, but before he could do so, something caught his eye. He turned back for a second look and had to clap his hand over his mouth to prevent an audible gasp escaping his lips.
With one hand still pressed across his mouth, John used the other to reach for the gun that was holstered deep within his jacket.
He edged his way into the office, gun in hand, eyes fixated on the thing which had given him such a fright.
A human foot. From behind Molly's generously proportioned desk protruded a bare, human foot. Male, if the size was anything to go by.
John could only guess at what had happened to the owner of said foot, and he couldn't bring himself to think of what had become of Molly.
"When Sherlock finds out Molly's gone missing…" John's blood ran cold and his heart pounded in his ears. His mind flashed back to the way Sherlock had brutally sent three men to hospital when they'd roughed up his landlady, Mrs. Hudson. John was certain that more of the same was in store for anyone who dared lay a hand on Dr. Hooper, the only pathologist with whom Sherlock would work.
Taking a shaky breath and trying to stay silent, John crept ever closer to the foot which jutted out from behind the desk.
"Definitely male," he thought to himself, once he was close enough to examine the dark hairs on a toe or two, not to mention the prodigious array of hairs which encircled the bared leg just above the ankle.
John steeled himself, knowing that he had to examine whatever horrors lay on the other side of the desk if he was going to get to the bottom of what had happened here. Gore didn't bother him, only the juxtaposition of gore in places where it didn't belong. Tiny offices belonging to coroners who wore yellow ducky jumpers, for example.
Hand steady on his service revolver, ready and aimed, John made one swift move to investigate who -and what - was hidden behind the desk.
When he first laid eyes on the scene beyond the desk, John couldn't really comprehend what he was seeing. He rocked back onto his heels a bit, feeling dizzy, his blood swiftly rushing away from his extremities and pounding in his ears. There was no combat training or battle readiness that could have prepared him for what he saw lying there on the floor.
It was Sherlock. The rogue, protruding foot belonged to Sherlock Holmes. A quite naked, soundly sleeping Sherlock Holmes. He was fine, no gruesome injuries, no trauma, just peacefully dozing there on the floor of Molly Hooper's office.
John made an attempt to swallow, even though his throat felt coated with sand and his tongue felt stubbornly thick.
Sherlock was not alone.
Curled up alongside Sherlock's prone form, head resting on his shoulder and a hand placed protectively upon his chest, was Molly Hooper herself.
Years of training led John to reflexively holster his gun, even as he silently wondered if Sherlock had drugged him again and if this was just some sort of bizarre hallucination. He rubbed at his eyes, pinched himself a bit, and looked down at the floor once again.
It was definitely Molly there, nestled into the crook of Sherlock's arm, with her pale slender arm snaked across his bared chest. Her long braid was in disarray and John could just barely make out the soft rhythm of her sleeping breaths.
Sherlock's chin rested lightly atop Molly's head, and it was clear from their posture that he was holding her body close to his underneath their blankets.
"-Blankets?" John asked himself silently, brow furrowed. He had a closer look to see that Molly was wrapped in a dark woolen material, oddly lumpy for a blanket. John quite nearly swayed in shock when he spied an unmistakable scarlet buttonhole…
Sherlock, so fussy and particular about his signature garment, had apparently used the bespoke greatcoat to cover Molly's naked, sleeping form.
Torn between wanting to run from the room, and not wanting to look away, John let his gaze rest on Sherlock. This was so much more of Sherlock than John had ever seen, and he found himself mesmerized by the infinitely pale, lean frame, the ropelike blue veins that snaked their way beneath his ivory skin, the sinewy muscles...the garment that was covering Sherlock was much smaller than the one covering Molly, and John felt heat rising to his cheeks with how much of his flatmate he was able to see.
"You're a surgeon for Chrissakes," John scolded himself internally. "You've seen hundreds of naked bodies, many in far worse shape than this one." Still, there was something about seeing so much of Sherlock that was tender and humanizing.
Turning his attention back to the garment covering so little of Sherlock's form, it only took moments for John to realize that the thin white fabric was, in fact, Dr. Hooper's lab coat, which had been tossed over him in order to provide a very small amount of modesty.
Desperately struggling to maintain silence, scarcely daring to breathe, John examined the scene around them. Articles of clothing lay in piles in the darkened corners of the office, and the desk itself was more than slightly askew.
Backing out of the office in a daze of disbelief, John spied the last bit of evidence that made no mistake of what had happened there: the empty, hastily torn-open foil of a condom packet lying on Molly's desk.
Back in the main room, he quietly pulled the door closed behind him and took his first deep breath in what felt like hours. Once he felt sure that his feet were solidly beneath him, John left St. Bart's still in a haze of disbelief. Had he really, really just seen Sherlock nude? And with Molly Hooper, of all people? The pavement beneath his feet swayed as he walked and more than once John was sure he was going to be sick in a rubbish bin. Why did he feel this way? Why did he feel as though he were on a carnival ride where the floor had been taken out from under him? John's face burned hot and his limbs ached with cold as he continued to stumble along.
Why, why did he feel as though he'd just been socked in the stomach and smacked in the face? John could only wonder.
Millions more questions than answers flew through John's mind. More than anything though, he wondered how he was going to face his flatmate now that the image of he and Molly pressed together in a post-coital embrace would be burned into his memory forever.